Many years ago, long before Covid and when Donald Trump was still a property magnate-cum-reality TV star, I crossed the pond to study for my PhD at Penn. Not Penn State, which everyone seems to have heard of because of some obscure sex scandal; not Princeton, basking in its Michelle Obama afterglow; but Penn. It’s in the Ivy League, before you crinkle your nose: it has Gothic Revival buildings, frat houses, jocks, and Americans talk endlessly about how old it is. Some call it the Jewish Ivy, thanks to its high proportion of JAPs – Jewish American Princesses – who went there after a Gossip Girl existence at private school in New York. I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I was young, impressionable and ready to wear the Penn merch and Nikes at the drop of a baseball cap. My family, appalled, thought I might never return.
These days, though, Penn is unofficially known as the Trump Ivy.
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